(1931-2016) US academic and author whose first work of genre interest was the nonfiction study Lord of Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (1974); separate examinations of these two authors from a Christian standpoint followed [see Checklist below]. Purtill's Kaphtu Universe sequence, beginning with The Golden Gryphon Feather (1979) and extending to two trilogies, is fantasy inspired by archaeology and the myths of ancient Greece. Murdercon (1982), in which a murder is discovered at an sf Convention, is a nonfantastic tale involving Recursive SF elements. In The Parallel Man (1984; exp vt as Parallel Worlds of Richard Purtill, coll 2011), a warrior Hero in a fantasy world finds that he is in fact a Clone in a high-tech Parallel World, where he and his mirror must come, uneasily, to terms; the tale is very competently crafted. The same setting appears in three short stories, included with other short work in Parallel Worlds of Richard Purtill. [JC/DRL]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →